It seems to me that the layer near the surface absorbs energy around 15 microns, but that causes the CO2’s temperature to rise, and so the gas rises, allowing cooler molecules above to move closer to the surface where it too can absorb LWIR.

Sorry, but you’re rather far off. Individual molecules of CO2 absorb LWIR alright, but they then collide with other non-GHG molecules before they can re-radiate. This warms the entire air mass slightly. Now the lower troposphere is well mixed, generally over a fairly short period of time but not only from IR absorption but also from conduction and evaporation [water vapor being less dense than the rest of the air].) So some of the heat will be carried higher into the atmosphere via the normal convection processes as well as by re-radiation by the thermalized GHGs and some blackbody radiation also. BTW, when I say some of the heat is carried higher, that doesn’t mean that the air mass rising will maintain its temperature. As air rises the effects of gravity result in cooling the mass. There are also some pressure-volume changes which might cause cooling though strictly speaking they should work in concert to keep the temperature constant.

Anyway, the point is that it’s not the convection per se which causes the heat to escape via radiation. If air is prevented from mixing, say in an inversion situation, the radiation portion of atmospheric heat loss continues to work as usual since the CO2 (& H2O, etc.) pick up the energy needed to radiate from other molecules around them, not by having to physically move up (or down) in the atmosphere.

I was being honest and frank. I give you one more chance. Quit insulting people needlessly or I’ll give up, brush the dust off my feet and admit you’re simply a troll.

And while I think it’s a bit much to expect people to go back farther than the actual message referenced to determine context, I was aware that you’d been talking CO2 effects, or so I’d thought. But you said:

BTW, my point is about backloading of CO2 increases, and therefore of any effects downstream of that.

This sentence separates out the CO2 increases and the effects thereof and attaches the backloading to the former. That was what I was responding to. I can see now that you just don’t understand the problem with misplaced modifiers but believe me, it’s not obvious to someone reading a sentence like that what you imagined you were conveying.

Perhaps Monckton got his words (right or wrong) regarding Greenland from this article in the New York Times:

“Story of Viking Colonies’ Icy ‘Pompeii’ Unfolds From Ancient Greenland Farm”
May 8,2001 [registration required, so if you join you can access]

Text: from the article [bold text added by me]

Called “The Farm Beneath the Sand,” this site lay buried under glacial sands for six centuries. Today, it is called the Viking Pompeii in the Scandinavian press.

“The site lay buried under , glacial sands for six centuries.” caption under picture.

“At the Viking site near here, artifacts were locked in permafrost and buried under several feet of sand. Many organic artifacts, like antlers, bones, skins and wood, did not decompose. All farm animals appeared to have been evacuated, with the exception of a stray goat, which took refuge in a barn. Six centuries later, its mummified remains were under the collapsed thatch twig roof.”

“At the farm site, there is no indication that conflict with natives, now called the Thule people, precipitated the Norse departure. Virtually all Thule artifacts discovered at the farm were at the most recent layer of human occupation, indicating that migrating native hunters used the structure as a caribou hunting camp after the Europeans left.

What does seem to have contributed to the abandonment of the Western Settlements, archaeologists said, is climate change. The onset of a “little ice age” made living halfway up Greenland’s coast untenable in the mid-1300’s, argues Dr. Charles Schweger, an archaeology professor at the University of Alberta, who has studied soils around the Farm Beneath the Sand.
Dr. Schweger said the Norse were no match for cooling temperatures, which caused a glacier several miles up a valley to expand. As this glacier grew, it also released more water every summer into the valley, causing turbidity in drinking water and raging floods that blanketed meadows with sand and gravel. Today the edge of Greenland’s ice cap is only six miles from the old farm site. But in the mid-14th century, it probably was far closer.

The farm’s evolving architecture also reflected the effect of cooling temperatures, Dr. Berglund said. Initially, a cluster of earthen walled buildings, the farm evolved over the centuries into one large building, with several small rooms, all under one roof. This “centralized farm” maximized body heat of humans and animals. Noting that the main building seemed to be constantly undergoing changes, Dr. Berglund estimated that a total of 40 rooms were configured at the site over nearly four centuries of occupation.

Ground into the mud were remains of wild animals, their bones cracked open to yield the marrow. Studies of skeletons at a regional churchyard indicate that the Norse diet grew increasingly dependent on marine life, largely seals and fish, as it became increasingly difficult to maintain cows and sheep.

In another reflection of how climate change and degradation of meadows eroded the Norses’ pastoral economy, yarn found in the weaving room indicates that the weavers stretched their wool supply by mixing sheep wool with fur from caribou, polar bears, foxes and wolves.”

Jim, I’ve been following the debate here between yourself, Reid, Willis and welikerocks for the past few days and have desited from contributing because sea-level measurement and analysis is not my field though I have an interest in it from the earth system science point of view.

From the sidelines it seems to me that both you and Willis are saying pretty much the same thing with respect to the data. There has been a change in the sign of sea level movement over the past 150 years. i.e. prior to 1850 it may have been either static or had been falling for an undetermined period. Unfortunately the tide gauge data do not extend far back to say exactly what has happened. From most analyses this acceleration occured during a pretty small time interval between 1850 and 1900. The 20th century data shows some fluctuation in the measured rate of rise of the eustatic level. It may have accelerated slightly throughout the century, it may have not. I think the jury is probably still out on that.

The data begs several really interesting questions not least of which is what is the cause of the sudden acceleration during the latter half of the 19th century. Do we have an adequate understanding and phenomenological model to account for this and the observed fluctuations. I’m not convinced that we have a good enough handle on this yet.

Your position as I read it is that using climate models, incorporating some possibilities for melting of continental ice sheets and projecting into the future, I think you used the word millenium, the rise might be 8 metres. This is a fine position to hold and I have no objection to that. It is however based on a model that sees significant collapse of both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

I think Willis and welikrocks are perhaps arguing from the position that they don’t as yet have any confidence in the models and certainly in their ability to predict climate change and ice sheet dynamics long into the future. They are basing predictions on a simple extrapolation of existing data over a hundred year time scale. I think Monckton is saying the same thing though he ill advisedly used the Morner references to back up his claim!

The standpoint of Willis and others is that they are not convinced that CO2 forcing of the climate system will result in significant temperature shifts and dramatic changes to ice sheet dynamics, not withstanding the collapse of some ice shelves such as Larsen B. To this extent their argument is staill based on a model, one that does not agree with the projections of the TAR or your analysis of the situation. None the less, given our understanding, it is a perfectly valid position to hold.

Which is right I honestly don’t know. However there is a rational scientific debate to be had here. It is not well served by the general tone. One thing I value this site for is its pedagogical possibilities. What we have here is not debate but statements of entrenched positions. Smug remarks about PGR/GIA and modelling that demonstrate the depth of your knowledge don’t help either. If you want to make a case then let’s do so in a civilised debate. What you have to say is important but it is getting lost in the antagonism.

]]>By: welikerockshttps://climateaudit.org/2006/11/22/gore-gored-monckton-replies/#comment-70924
Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:22:17 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=923#comment-70924#139 Jim Barret,
here’s the main page for that graph : http://tinyurl.com/yyuz2k. I think you are looking for disaster and not reading what I wrote either. I said “sea level has been rising and it probably hasnt been constant” which is why that insert is there on the graph-it is showing the detail of the spikes and valleys of tidal variation -it doesn’t make the fact that sea level has been rising in a pretty constant rate since the last ice age go away, what it does show us about GW believers is that they want to focus on the spike because it falls into the GW catagory of “evidence”-and they fail to take any consideration of earth age and timescales, land characteristics-and sea level rise being constant overall for a very long time-

The text says that this about the “acceleration” in the insert :
“Recent
Tide gauge and radiocarbon based sea level records for southern New England indicate an apparent acceleration in the rate of relative sea-level rise (RSLR) from approximately 1 mm/year to over 2.5 mm/year within the last 500 years (Figure 2). Given that the community structure of salt marsh flora and fauna is intrinsically linked to tidal flooding frequency. Increases in the rate of RSLR can lead to shifts in the distribution of flora and fauna. In addition, marshes can be lost if the rate of RSLR exceeds the ability of a marsh to accrete vertically maintaining elevation relative to local sea level.

Note: “recent” is within 500 yrs. Note: the interplay between the coastal marshes and the tides over 500 yrs has something to do with it.

you say: “Do you have any idea what “PGR” or “GIA” are? ”
Yes I do, and the California report I referred to hid those factors and used tidal data from sinking coastal cities-to promote the state of fear known as GW for the citizens of California to worry over. You also fail to concede that there are places on earth where there is no major sea level rise at all-including areas with subsidence-my husband is an expert for one of those places: Crescent City, Ca., and there is no alarming rise there.

here’s a graph of the Bering land Bridge and sea level…the animals and maybe even people were able to migrate to North America because there was a land bridge-which is now underwater…http://tinyurl.com/se8uo

In this paper the sea level rise in the Mediterranean Sea in the period ranging from 600 B.C. to 100 A.D. is studied by using archeological ruins chosen in order to give assurance with respect to the date and the height. Among the archeological structures still and in contact with the sea. Roman fishponds, harbor wharves, and docks are the most important. A plot of measured depth versus date shows that from 600 B.C. to 100 A.D. the Mediterranean Sea rose from -1.7 to -0.4 m with respect to mean sea level in 1884. Two least squares regression lines with 95% confidence region were drawn. The first, which includes all 22 data sets, shows a rise of the mean sea level of 1.7 mm/yr in the time span from 600 B.C. to 100 A.D. the other one, containing only 20 data sets, shows a rise of the mean sea level of 1.4 mm/yr in the same time period. This rise of the sea may have ended around the year 350 A.D. A rise of 1.4 mm/yr agrees with the rise of the Mediterranean Sea as recorded in the last century by tide gage.”

I could pull up hundreds of papers that show the sea level has been rising in a constant curve since the last ice age.